Fitzpatrick's & Rogers Nursing Rhythm Model

Nursing Rhythm Model By Fitzpatrick's & Rogers

Fitzpatrick's Rhythm Model Elements,Importance of Model,Rogers' Correlation,Indices of Human Functioning,Integration Between Environment and Individual,Age Based Differences,Fitzpatrick Hypothesis,Collaboration With Interdisciplinary Teaching.

Fitzpatrick's Rhythm Model Elements

    Fitzpatrick (1989) presented a rhythm model for the field of inquiry for nursing. Person, environment, health, and nursing are defined and related to the model. All of these elements have been linked to the idea that meaning is essential to life. 

    Meaning is seen as the most crucial piece of the human experience and necessary to enhance and maintain life. Fitzpatrick incorporated Rogers' (1983) postulated correlates of human development as the basis to differentiate, organize, and order life's reality.

Importance of Model

    Fitzpatrick (1989) recognized the importance of information systems as part of the field of inquiry within her rhythm model for nursing. 

    By asserting that nursing knowledge is fundamentally inseparable from the strategies and structures that represent it and that nursing informatics comprises a new focus to manage the technologies involved in nursing, Fitzpatrick suggested that information systems be linked to nursing knowledge development.

Rogers' Correlation

    Rogers' (1983) correlates of shorter, higher frequency waves that manifest shorter rhythms and approach a seemingly continuous pattern serve as Fitzpatrick's (1989) foci for hypothesizing the existence of rhythmic patterns. 

    Rogers' position that the human life span approximates transformation with human development aimed toward transcendence has been incorporated within Fitzpatrick's descriptions of life perspective. The developmental correlate whereby time seems timeless represents a beginning of Fitzpatrick's theorizing regarding temporal patterns. 

    Motion patterns have been developed from Rogers' proposal of motion seeming to be continuous with development. Consciousness patterns are aligned with Rogers' idea that one progresses from sleep to wakefulness and from there to a pattern that is beyond waking. 

    The correlates of "visibility" becoming more ethereal in nature and "heaviness" approaching a more weightless phase serve as the basis for Fitzpatrick's perceptual patterns. 

    Fitzpatrick's (1989) definitions of person and environment are from her interpretations of Rogers' (1983) developmental correlates and explanations of person and environment. Envisioned as patterns within a pattern, or rhythms within a life rhythm, Fitzpatrick's rhythm patterns serve as the specifications for person and environment. 

    Occurring within the context of rhythmical person/environment interaction, indices of holistic human functioning are identified by Fitzpatrick as temporal, motion, consciousness, and perceptual patterns. Fitzpatrick's writings are consistent with Rogers' position regarding person and environment being open systems in continuous interaction.

Indices of Human Functioning 

    Fitzpatrick (1989) has asserted that the four indices of human functioning are intricately related to health patterns throughout the life span, and these indices are rhythmic in nature. 

    In a projection of Rogers' (1983) principle regarding the continuous interaction of persons and their environments, Fitzpatrick postulated the dynamic concepts of congruency, consistency, and integrity as complementary with rhythmic patterns. 

    The nonlinear character of patterns noted by Rogers has supported Fitzpatrick's incorporation of Rogers' specifications regarding four-dimensionality. Fitzpatrick stated that health is a basic human dimension undergoing continuous development. 

    She offered heightened awareness of the meaningfulness of life as an example of a more fully developed phase of human health. The ontogenetic and phylogenetic interactions between person and health are regarded as the essence of nursing.     

Fitzpatrick attended not only to relationships within or between these interactions but also included latent relationships external to person and health. Nursing interventions were interpreted as facilitating the developmental process toward health. 

    Fitzpatrick stated that nursing interventions can be focused on enhancing the developmental process toward health so that individuals might develop their human potential.

Integration Between Environment and Individual 

    Because person and environment are integral with one another and have no real boundaries, environment is applied when the term person is used. The human element is treated as an open, holistic, rhythmic system that is described by temporal, motion, consciousness, and perceptual patterns. 

    Fitzpatrick's (1989) conception of person is augmented by awareness of the meaningfulness of life or health. The meaningfulness of life is manifest through a series of life crisis experiences with potential for growth in one's meaning for living. Nursing's central concern is focused on the person in relation to the dimension of meaning within health.

    Fitzpatrick's (1989) conceptualizations have been investigated by graduate students in nursing at the master's and doctoral level. 

    Studies looking at temporality in combination with adult and elderly populations, temporality in association with psychiatric clients, temporality in pregnant adolescents, and temporality in relation to terminally ill individuals provide a base for the existence of temporal patterns. 

    However, from a holistic perspective of life span, use of the model is absent in nursing research focused on infants" and children's notions of temporality.

Age Based Differences

    Both younger and elderly groups have been addressed in investigating motion (Roberts & Fitzpatrick, 1983). Nevertheless, patterns of consciousness have been examined exclusively in older age groups (Floyd, 1982).

    Different types of perceptual patterns, including for example, perception of color and music, have been investigated. Because one's perception would seem to be dependent on the present pattern of consciousness, these studies seem to be related to patterns of consciousness.

    Empirical support for the existence of non-linear temporal patterns emerged from a number of research endeavors and helped to identify the need to generate questions about ways to measure the experience of time. 

    The prevalence of temporal distinctions on the basis of differences in development were apparent in at least one study (Fitzpatrick & Donovan, 1978). A sense of timelessness was described as being characteristic of behaviors identified among the dying.

    Pressler, Wells, and Hepworth (1993) investigated methodological issues relevant to very preterm infant (< 30 weeks gestation) outcomes based on the idea of the existence of micro rhythms within some larger rhythmic pattern. 

    By applying time series techniques and fuzzy subsets to the analysis of longitudinal data collected in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment, this study examined single-subject results for generalization across individuals. 

    In general terms, the sequelae and risks associated with the NICU for very preterm neonates indicate that information processing deficits, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorders are not uncommon during the preschool and school-age years. 

    It is speculated that these problems might reflect these infants' inabilities to cope with stressors or care received while in the NICU environment. Shiao (1993) investigated perceptual patterns of low-birth-weight infants in neonatal intensive care in terms of routine care interrupting breathing, oxygen saturation, and feeding rhythms. 

    Yarcheski and Mahon (1995) examined human field patterns (as described by Rogers) in relation to perceived health status in healthy adolescents and found results consistent with the life perspective rhythm model. 

    More recently, numerous qualitative researchers have used Fitzpatrick's model to compare and contrast their findings, particularly in phenomenological studies that examine participants' experience of phenomena (see Chiu, 1999; Cowan, C., 1995; Criddle , 1993; Montgomery, 2000, 2001 ; Moore, SL, 1997; Pasquali , EA, 1999; Ross, 1996).

Fitzpatrick Hypothesis

    Borrowing from some of her own ideas about temporality, Fitzpatrick (1989) has hypothesized the field of inquiry for nursing knowledge development by outlining nursing inquiry of the past. She has traced major historical milestones of nursing research and identified important events leading up to present-day research in nursing.

Collaboration With Interdisciplinary Teaching

    In cooperation with two colleagues, Fitzpatrick (Fitzpatrick, Wykle , & Morris, 1990) attempted to specify the field of inquiry for nursing in the area of geriatric mental health. 

    Through the development of collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching, research, and practice relationships, Fitzpatrick and colleagues (1990) described how organizational theory could be used to support the development of a collaboration model for promoting the mental health of elderly persons across care settings. 

    Intervention research with elderly populations was used to determine ways for improving the understanding, treatment, and rehabilitation of the mentally ill. The significance of Fitzpatrick's ideas lies in how rhythmic methodologies might be used to develop nursing knowledge and provide external validity to the model.